Promotion

Richard Branson the film

The life and times of Richard Branson, the man who founded the huge company that is Virgin, is going to be made into a film from his own autobiography. Losing My Virginity (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com) and is already giving interviews to the production for the film.

It's a pretty amazing story where one man started a business selling records through mail order, expanding to some record stores in 1972. Virgin Records became Virgin Megastores, Virgin Cinemas, Virgin Cola, Virgin Vodka, Virgin Media, Virgin Comics, Virgin Media, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Produced, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Trains, even Virgin Galactic, and that's not touching on his many charity and record breaking attempts.

It seems a strange choice, unless that is the film is going to be a comedy with Richard Branson's story at the core, but there's not much to indicate what direction the film will take in the Variety story.

His life is a hell of a story, but as a comedy I can't really see the business end of his life really coming to the fore, and that seems a shame for there are some epic stories in there, not least the battle he led Virgin Atlantic through with British Airways, or the starting up of Virgin Galactic. Instead we're likely to see a comedy and for me that seems to fit very nicely in the real early days of the empire, before even Virgin Megastores were mega, before they were even a few stores.